Every three years, the Copyright Office lets the public ask for exemptions to …

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Every three years, the US Copyright Office reviews the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's most controversial section—the ban on circumventing DRM, even for legal uses. The Copyright Office has the authority to issue three-year exemptions to that blanket ban, carving out space for DVD-ripping film school profs, for instance, or making it legal for people to bypass DRM in order to unlock cell phones.

Tomorrow, four days of hearings begin on a new round of exemptions (read the schedule). What's on the table? Jailbreaking your iPhone, busting the DRM on music and movies if authentication servers ever die, ripping clips from DVDs for noncommercial use, breaking digital locks on DRM schemes that "compromise the security of personal computers," and cracking open DRM on subscription streaming video "where the provider has only made available players for a limited number of platforms," among others.

Advocates of new exemptions are aiming high here, especially when you consider how stingy the Copyright Office has been in handing out such exemptions over the years. We spoke to three such advocates who will be testifying before the Copyright Office over the next few weeks, often while sitting right next to lawyers from Apple Computer, the DVD Copy Control Association, Time Warner, the MPAA, and others who oppose them. Given the odds against them, how are they preparing for the hearings—and do they hold out any chance of success?

Fred von Lohmann, Electronic Frontier Foundation

The three-year exemption process looked so broken back in 2005 that the EFF issued a screed about how the process wasn't worth participating in. One of the authors was Fred von Lohmann, EFF's super-sharp copyright lawyer, who tomorrow will find himself defending not one but three new exemption requests. What changed?

Von Lohmann tells us that the process has improved since that report, and in 2006 the Copyright Office changed some of the "procedural hurdles" that EFF had complained about. "So while we continue to be frustrated by the Office's continued resistance to personal uses that many consumers take for granted (like backing up digital media)," von Lohmann says, "we are focusing our efforts on the kinds of proposals that the Copyright Office has shown at least some willingness to entertain. This does not diminish the fact that the DMCA rulemaking has not, and will never, address many of the major the problems that the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions have caused for consumers."

This time around, EFF is pushing for exemptions that would allow cell phone unlocking, cell phone jailbreaking, and the use of DVD clips in noncommercial videos where the intended use is "fair." Given the extreme skepticism shown by the Copyright Office to these sorts of "let us rip DVDs when the intended use is fair" type arguments, this may be a tough sell.

Von Lohmann acknowledges as much, saying, "I will admit, however, that the Copyright Office has been generally hostile to DVD-related exemptions in previous rulemakings, so we'll have to wait and see. But the importance of an exemption has become particularly obvious in light of the RealDVD litigation, where Hollywood has again renewed its argument that the DMCA trumps fair use where DVDs are concerned. If that's right, then fair users need a DMCA exemption."

Even with some precedent for cell phone unlocking exemptions, researching, writing, and then defending DMCA exemption proposals is a lot of work. "We have put a considerable amount of time and effort into understanding how iPhone jailbreaking and unlocking work in preparation for the rulemaking," von Lohmann says. And, even if successful, the exemptions remain in place for only three years.